That glad to-morrow for Valentine never came.  At the time when he should have reached Wigfield, a letter summoned his brother to Melcombe.

Emily and John Mortimer had delayed their return, for Valentine, whether from excitement at the hope of setting off, or from the progress of his disease, had been attacked, while sitting out of doors, with such sudden prostration of strength that he was not got back again to the house without the greatest difficulty.  They opened a wide window of the “great parlour,” laid him on a couch, and then for some hours it seemed doubtful whether he would rally.

He was very calm and quiet about it, did not at all give up hope, but assented when his sister said, “May I write to St. George to come to you?” and sent a message in the letter, asking his brother to bring his wife and child.

He seemed to be much better when they arrived, and for two or three days made good progress towards recovery; but the doctors would not hear of his attempting to begin his journey, or even of his rising from the bed which had been brought down for him into the wide, old-fashioned parlour.

And so it came to pass that Brandon found himself alone about midnight with Valentine, after a very comfortable day of little pain or discomposure.  All the old intimacy had returned now, and more than the old familiar affection.  Giles was full of hope, which was all the stronger because Valentine did not himself manifest that unreasonable hopefulness which in a consumptive patient often increases as strength declines.

His will was signed, and in his brother’s keeping; all his affairs were settled.

“I know,” he had said to his brother, “that I have entirely brought this illness on myself.  I was perfectly well.  I often think that if I had never come here I should have been so still.  I had my choice; I had my way.  But if I recover, as there seems still reason to think I may, I hope it will be to lead a higher and happier life.  Perhaps even some day, though always repenting it, I may be able to look back on this fault and its punishment of illness and despondency with a thankful heart.  It showed me myself.  I foresee, I almost possess such a feeling already.  It seems to have been God’s way of bringing me near to Him.  Sometimes I feel as if I could not have done without it.”

Valentine said these words before he fell asleep that night, and Giles, as he sat by him, was impressed by them, and pondered on them.  So young a man seldom escapes from the bonds of his own reticence, when speaking of his past life, his faults, and his religious feelings.  This was not like Valentine.  He was changed, but that, considering what he had undergone, did not surprise a man who could hope and believe anything of him, so much as did his open, uncompromising way of speaking about such a change.

“And yet it seems strange,” Valentine added, after a pause, “that we should be allowed, for want of knowing just a little more, to throw ourselves away.”